Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Green Lynx Spider
A slender, bright green spider armed with long spiny legs that ambushes insects from flowers and shrubs without spinning a capture web.
spider
Green Stink Bug
A broad, shield-shaped bug in solid bright green with a shell-like appearance, easily disturbed off host plants and known for releasing a pungent odor when handled.
true-bug
Green Peach Aphid
A small, pale yellow-green aphid with an exceptionally broad host range, recognized as one of the most widespread and adaptable aphid species found on garden vegetables, ornamentals, and stone fruit trees.
true-bug
Green June Beetle
A large, velvety green scarab beetle with bronze edges that flies with a loud buzzing drone on warm summer days, often seen around ripening fruit.
beetle
Great Green Bush Cricket
Europe's largest bush cricket, this brilliant grass-green insect fills warm summer evenings with a loud, sustained buzzing call audible from a considerable distance.
grasshopper-cricket
Southern Green Stink Bug
A large, shield-shaped, solid bright green true bug found on a wide variety of garden and crop plants across warm regions worldwide, recognizable by its broad body and, in some individuals, a row of small pale dots along the shoulders.
true-bug
Eastern Pondhawk
A bold, ground-perching dragonfly whose bright green females and powdery blue males look almost like different species, and which readily preys on other dragonflies.
dragonfly
Cotton Bollworm
A variably colored caterpillar, ranging from green to brown to nearly pink, that burrows into cotton bolls, corn ears, and tomato fruit, feeding concealed inside the very structures it damages.
caterpillar-larva
Gray Hairstreak
A small slate-gray butterfly with thin white lines, an orange-capped black spot near the hindwing tail, and one of the broadest host-plant ranges of any North American butterfly, making it a familiar visitor to gardens and fields alike.
butterfly
Bluet Damselfly
Small and delicate, bluet damselflies flash brilliant blue and black along the vegetated edges of ponds and lakes, forming mating pairs that fly in tandem while laying eggs directly into plant stems underwater.
dragonfly
Brimstone Butterfly
A sulphur-yellow, leaf-shaped butterfly whose folded wings mimic a fresh green leaf so convincingly it is often credited as the origin of the word 'butterfly'.
butterfly
Bogong Moth
A modest brown, mottled moth famous for its extraordinary mass seasonal migration across thousands of kilometers to cool alpine caves in the Australian mountains, forming one of the largest known insect migrations by biomass.
moth
Yellow Scorpion
A robust, sandy-yellow scorpion of arid regions that spends daylight hours buried or hidden beneath stones, emerging at dusk to hunt.
arachnid
Meadow Spittlebug
A small, mottled hopping true bug whose immature nymphs are far more often noticed than the adults, hidden inside frothy blobs of white foam known as cuckoo spit on plant stems.
true-bug
Spring Azure
One of the earliest-flying small blue butterflies of spring, with soft pale-blue upperwings, a whitish gray underside dotted with faint dark markings, and no tails on the hindwing.
butterfly
Asparagus Beetle
A small, boldly patterned blue-black beetle with cream and orange-red markings that clusters on emerging asparagus spears in spring.
beetle
Northern Mole Cricket
A stout, velvety brown cricket with shovel-like front legs built for tunneling through damp soil, more often heard as a low buzzing trill at night than seen above ground.
grasshopper-cricket
Checkered White
A white butterfly patterned with irregular gray-black checkered spots, commonly fluttering low over open, sunny, weedy fields across much of North America.
butterfly
Lacewing
A delicate, pale green insect with large, transparent, intricately veined wings and shining golden or copper-colored eyes, valued as a natural predator of aphids in its larval form.
other
Field Cricket
A stout, dark cricket whose loud, rhythmic chirping is one of the most familiar summer and fall night sounds in fields and lawns across much of the world.
grasshopper-cricket
Imperial Moth
One of the largest and most variably patterned silk moths in North America, with broad yellow wings mottled in shades of purple, brown, and pink, and a caterpillar that can grow to impressive size on a wide range of forest trees.
moth
American House Spider
A small, brownish spider with a bulbous, mottled abdomen that spins loose, irregular tangle webs in quiet corners, ceilings, and window frames.
spider
Striped Bark Scorpion
A slender, tan scorpion marked with two bold dark stripes down its back, often found tucked under bark, rocks, or debris across the central United States.
arachnid
Hoverfly
A slender, bee- or wasp-patterned fly known for its remarkable ability to hover motionless in midair before darting suddenly to a new flower.
fly